The Sun’s forays into technology have often been halting, grudging, and tardy. A computer didn’t appear in the magazine’s offices until the late 1980s, and even then it got less attention than the typewriters. We didn’t have a fax machine until a reader bought one for us — because he wanted to fax us something and couldn’t.
The Sun’s first-ever website launched in August 1999, into a world of staticky dial-up tones, GeoCities, and frequent buffering. It came about thanks to the generosity of two Sun subscribers: Shelley Sherman and her partner, Meredith Tupper, owners of the small web-design company PintSize Graphics & Web Hosting. Wanting the magazine they loved to have a presence on the Internet, Sherman and Tupper took it upon themselves to build a modest, stately website that perhaps undersold the magazine: “If you haven’t heard of The Sun,” the About page read, “you’re not alone.”
